


Rainbows are Illusory

by Quantum_Tarantino



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol, Brooding, Drunk Sex, F/F, Fluffy Smut, One Night Stands, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quantum_Tarantino/pseuds/Quantum_Tarantino
Summary: The White Fang has gone all to hell, Blake ran off and Mistral sucks.It hasn't been a very good few months for Ilia, but things are looking up. Especially when she gets to talk things over with a certain stranger.
Relationships: Ilia Amitola/Emerald Sustrai
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	Rainbows are Illusory

_"—AT YOUR OWN RISK. DRAINAGE ALERT ON DISTRICTS FOUR, FIVE AND SIX, WITH THE_ UMETATE _MARKET—"_

Ilia scowled and ducked into a nearby bar, away from the wind, rain and the loudspeakers. It would've been annoying enough to have to deal with the constant rain this region got – especially when some opportunistic fucker had nicked her only umbrella just before the downpour really hit – but she also had to put up with the incessant blare of the PA system which ever so helpfully kept reminding her about how everything was waterlogged. The whole system reeked of Atlesian meddling where some inspired white-room engineer had come up with an entirely useless system that looked great on paper. Which upon installation, of course, had gotten worst of the both worlds with the traditional touch of Mistralian corruption and devil-may-care attitude which resulted in an ill-maintained hackjob network of cheapest loudspeakers possible which were so routinely vandalized she didn't know where they got all the replacements from.

She missed Menagerie. At least if you got shanked there, it was because someone wanted your money rather than wanting "your kind" gone. Not to mention the... simplicity of the life there. Go there, say this, do that, stab them. None of this "six hours of sitting around like a sore thumb next to Ghira with nothing worthwhile to say" business which had been taking all too much of her time after landing in Mistral.

Yet here she was with nowhere else to go, which was also why she found herself shrugging off her soaked jacket in a bar that fell somewhere between "seedy" and "rustic," depending on if you were a regular or not. The roof and walls kept most of the rain and noise out which was most of what she looked for in a joint like this. It was also pleasantly lacking a sign telling her kind to not enter, but it was still better to keep her rather conspicuous Faunus trait on the down-low to make sure she didn't get bothered. Not that she'd have issues stabbing a fucker if need be, but that kind of put a damper on the atmosphere.

She shook water out of her hair with a grimace. Her old jumpsuit had been water-resistant which was something she now sorely missed, but it had... some baggage, so she had opted to throw the thing in the trash in favor of the pants, jacket and the tank top, the latter of which was mercifully still mostly dry. She looked for someplace to hang her jacket on, but the bar had no coat racks in it. Or other patrons, for that matter, with only the bartender there to keep her company. The man in question, a vaguely sleazy-looking man in an impeccable apron, looked up from behind the bar and gave her a distracted nod as she walked up to him and leaned on the bar.

"Give me a..." she held the sentence hanging as she looked over the selection. Right now she was in a sour mood, so something befitting that would be... "Lopatka." She held up two fingers. "And make it double." Yeah, that would be a good punch in the gut to round off this disaster of a day.

The barkeep looked her up and down and poured her a singular shot which he then clinked in front of her. "Can't do. Law says one serving of hard liquor per order."

Ilia blinked. What? She stared at the barkeep, trying to figure out if he was joking, but he had already moved to ordering the glasses behind the bar.

"You... won't sell more than one shot for customers?"

He shrugged. "Not at once. Come back when you've finished with that."

Fucking Mistralians. Ilia groaned and took her shot, wincing when it scoured its way down her throat. Yeah, that really brought her home. She had almost forgotten how fucked-up Atlas was, all the way down to their vodkas. "A bourbon, then. On the rocks. Something Valish."

Without looking, the barkeep snatched an amber-colored bottle from behind him and flicked it label-first towards her. "Old Hog?"

She didn't recognize the brand, but she just nodded and let the barkeep pour her a finger. Glass in tow, she waved her scroll to pay for them and sat down heavily on one of the corner stools, brooding over her drink.

Taking stock of everything gave her a pretty bleak outlook. Blake had taken off with the bombshell and crew. Adam had scampered off like a whipped chihuahua, and with him, the remains of the old White Fang she had lived for had imploded spectacularly, as he had been the one last thing holding together the people who had been in too deep to conceive leaving. She herself had been one of those people up until fairly recently. Not that her change of heart endeared her to all too many people. While yes, she had disarmed some bombs to hamper their Haven operation, she had also been on their bankroll for years. A lot of people weren't going to forget that. In all fairness, she had killed some people. Mostly deserving, but... She exhaled slowly. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist, and that was how most people saw it.

And once a turncoat, always a turncoat, when it came to what was left of the White Fang. She had backstabbed basically everyone in her previous life with that little bomb stunt, and the people who would have rather liked seeing how a redux of the Revolution would take off were definitely not going to forget what she had done, so she could enjoy the vitriol from both sides. Oh, and since terrorism wasn't so peachy with the new management, she was also out of job, technically.

She sighed. At least Sun was nice. And the Belladonnas, too, but she couldn't help but feel just a touch out of place being all buddy-buddy with the parents of her crush after having tried to... kind of sort of little bit assassinate the lot of them.

She slumped down. Everything had been just so much easier when all she had to do was follow orders and dole out summary justice. Now though, everything was just a mess, and she didn't know what to do. So far she had just coasted along with the flow solely buoyed by the revelation that the White Fang had been rotten to the core, and while that was a crucially important realization, all it did was tell her where not to go. It wasn't easy to just shake off the entirety of her past life. Life she had been lying to herself about for the past... what, five years now, trying to stay in line with her peers and desperately framing everyone as a "freedom fighter" and whatever they did as "justice."

And then in Menagerie when Ghira had had the audacity of casually saving her life with barely even a thought, he had essentially slapped her in the face with the entirety of the hypocrisy of her worldview. What she had done... what she had _been_ wasn't working, and now she was hopelessly out of her depth.

She took a deep breath, for a moment focusing on inhaling the aroma of her drink. Truthfully, the taste never lived up to scent, but it brought her good memories of a warm evening. Well, 'good' as long as she didn't try to think too hard about the certain raven-haired girl who had offered this particular kind of drink to her from a smuggled bottle, back when neither had quite had the ID to get it on their own.

Fuck it all. She took a small sip and let it sit on her tongue for a moment before swallowing.

She'd have to do something. Just sitting around trying to blend in wasn't enough. She'd have to talk to Ghira. Just... talk. He was well within his right to have her arrested at any point – not that he would, she knew by now – but she couldn't just let that hang over them. She was an assassin, and he had been her target. Sure, he preached about forgiveness and acceptance and probably even believed it, but she needed to do more than that. She'd also have to have a long talk with Sun because he was itching to go back to Vacuo, and then she'd have to make a choice between staying or going. Leonardo had made sure that Mistral was in a screaming need for people who had more than a month's worth of militia training, so she should consider the recruitment program there, and...

Ugh. That was for tomorrow. She took another sip, getting the full taste and trying to understand why people went so crazy about the burning sensation under it. Right now what she had to do was get wasted, sob at the bartender or a particularly emphatic barstool, wake up with fruits of her hubris in the form of a splitting headache, and _then_ the next step was to get up and fix this mess that had become her life.

"Look, ma'am, law's the law. Finish that, and I can give you the next one."

Ilia started a scowl before realizing that the barkeep was speaking to someone else.

"I'm just saying it's a fucking stupid law!" The speaker was a woman with dark skin and green hair, dressed in chapped pants and a white-and-green top combo which left most of her midsection uncovered. The outfit was offbeat enough to hint at her being a Huntress, and the unmistakable shape of two exotic guns crossed at her lower back all but confirmed it.

The bartender was unimpressed, nonetheless, and just pushed a single drink of something clear over to her. "Do I look like a lawmaker to you? You can take it or leave it."

The woman rolled her eyes and inhaled the shot in one go without a blink. "Just give me another one." The barkeep obliged, and she sat down a few seats away from Ilia, close to the barkeep. "Don't put the bottle too far."

Ilia smirked and turned away. Seems like she wasn't the only foreigner around.

"And what's so funny to you, short stuff," the woman snapped, clearly having run out of patience a long time ago. Ilia turned towards her to take a better look, seeing that her hair was tousled and her eyes slightly bloodshot, like she had been crying.

Ilia gave her an emphatic smile. "Sorry. Just went through the same exchange myself." She held up her glass in her direction. "Fucking Mistralians, right?"

The woman stared at her for a second before mollifying and raising her own glass. "Damn straight. And fuck their dumb loud PA system too."

"Oh yeah," Ilia said and looked at the door, still hearing the muffled announcement drone on. The barkeep took the cue and graciously chose to relocate himself to the other end of the bar. "I can't imagine how much someone had to be paid for that to get greenlit. The urban planning that goes into this labyrinth is just absurd."

"Urban planning? Hah." The woman shook her head and took a small sip of her glass. "Calling it 'planning' is generous. This place grows like mold whichever way it pleases, and what they do is clean up afterwards where it gets too damp and dark."

Ilia looked at the trail of droplets she had left behind her on the floor and made a show of wringing a few drops of water out of her ponytail. "Not to be prejudiced, but I think there's something poetic about this being the place where someone steals my umbrella during a rainstorm."

The woman looked at the trail and nodded in sympathy. "There's petty thievery, and then there's petty thievery." She shook her head and turned fully towards Ilia, leaning on the bar with her elbow and raising her glass towards her. "What else should fuck off on this fine evening?"

Ilia tapped her glass, thinking for a second. "The inherent inequality of society?"

The woman let out a short laugh, seemingly surprised by her own reaction. "Sure, let's go with that." She took a sip and exhaled heavily. "On that note? Screw the academy too. Bunch of incompetent jackasses. All the time and money in the world to arm themselves, and they still needed to be bailed out by a ragtag gang of castoffs and militia the moment things went south." She took another sip with a bitter look on her face.

Ilia's smile faltered when she remembered how close of a call that had been. Adam had managed to rope in the headmaster himself, and there was some talk about a hostile SpecOps Hunter team being involved, but based on what Ghira had told her, that was either very hush-hush or just hearsay. All in all, they had come dreadfully close to having the whole of Mistral fall to chaos if it hadn't been for the eleventh-hour appearance of the neo–White Fang militia.

"Yeah." Ilia shook her head. "Unbelievable how poorly all that was managed. Relying on foreign troops just to stay stable doesn't give a very good picture of the kingdom."

"No, it really doesn't." It seemed personal for the woman. She exhaled slowly, deep in thought, and a silence fell on them. Ilia found no excuse to break it, so she turned to her own glass and let her thoughts wander. Blake really had saved the day, hadn't she. Well, not alone, but she was a Belladonna so she's what a lot of people fixated on, especially when Ghira was doing everything she could to prop up the new White Fang which was really in need of a figurehead. Not that she'd make a bad one...

"Name's Emerald, by the way," the woman suddenly said, and Ilia shook herself from her thoughts.

For a moment, she considered using a fake name, but she decided against it. Who even cared. "Ilia."

Emerald hummed. "You know what else can get fucked? Atlas. Just... all of it, honestly."

Ilia smiled, the old indignation deep in her rearing its head. "Oh, I think we'll make good friends." She clambered up and hopped on the stool next to Emerald who looked at her curiously. Ilia took a slow breath, swishing around the ice cubes in her drink while she remembered every little thing which had made her glad to leave that frozen dump behind. "All of it. The nobles, the Schnees, the army, the booze." She took a sip. "Especially the booze. Fastest cure to homesickness I've ever had."

Emerald raised an eyebrow at her. "You're Atlesian? Wouldn't have taken you for one."

She shrugged. "I was born there if that's what you're asking. Spent a lot of time..." She gestured in the direction she thought was Menagerie, but without saying it out loud. "Down south. Don't miss one bit of that cold hellhole."

"Mmmh." Emerald spun her glass around, watching the liquor swish around. "I feel you. I'm from here originally, but I went west for the most part. I've been around a fair bit, but I had enough of Atlas for a lifetime in a few months." She shook her head. "Cold and boring through and through. Like, Mistral is a dumpster fire, but it's my dumpster fire, you know?"

Ilia chuckled, remembering her recent assessment of how the muggers in Menagerie were more virtuous than the ones here. "I have a place like that. Nothing like home, right?"

Emerald nodded with a smile, but on a closer look, it seemed bitter. "I never stayed in one place for long, so 'home' is a bit of a flexible term, there."

Ilia could empathize. "Yeah, I hear you. It's not about the house, it's about the people, right?"

She had never had permanent lodgings with the White Fang, and it had been the clique around her which had made it work. Adam, Sienna, Blake, Trifa, Yuma... So many happy memories with those, most of which had now taken a hollow ring during these past few months. Her expression soured, and Emerald matched her.

"Yeah. The people." The melancholy was clear.

The bloodshot eyes made sense now, and when Ilia stumbled to apologize, Emerald only waved her hand at her, looking away and raising her glass to her lips again.

Damn it. She had meant to cheer her up, not bring her down. And she herself was nowhere near drunk enough to cry about Blake to a stranger. She downed the rest of her bourbon in one go, disgracing all proper procedure in favor of fast-tracking alcohol into her system. It burned and she clicked the glass loudly on the bar, exhaling sharply. "Well then, moving on. What about those guns of yours, eh? Never seen ones like them."

It took Emerald a second to switch tracks, and Ilia could see her brain clicking into Huntress gear. Anything that was shooty or stabby – preferably, both – was to Hunters what weather was to civilians when it came to forcing out small talk.

"Oh, these old shots of scrap?" Emerald deflected the compliment and pulled one out with a smooth motion and spun it around with practiced ease, putting it on the table. Immaculately maintained, and their moving parts were oiled to soundless perfection. "Something I picked up on the way. Vacuo has good blacksmiths if you can catch one sober enough."

Ilia hummed and took a closer look. Not touching them, of course, that would've been a dreadful faux pas. "Ooh, that's a sickle design. I love how the curves look on those. That's..." She squinted, looking at the cylinder. It had been a while since she had been eyeballing calibers. "...11x33mm, isn't it? I thought the Vacuans preferred the Peckford customary over the Atlesian standardization."

The diversion seemed to work, and Emerald picked up the gun to spin the cylinder out. "That's actually a longer story."

Ilia held her hand up to interrupt her before she could continue. "Oh, I see how it is. Bartender!" she shouted, waving at the man who turned to look. "Get me a long drink and for her, a..." She turned to Emerald, questioning.

"Oh, the same," Emerald said after a moment nodding at the bartender. "I, uh..."

Ilia waved her hand. "Don't mention it. Now what was this story about?"

Emerald looked at her, as if evaluating, and spoke up. "Well, that was years ago when I found myself on the Sand. If you think the rain is bad here, you haven't seen the sun over there. There was this one tribe I had tagged along with, and..."

Ilia nodded and smiled, taking a glass from the bartender and focusing on the story.

* * *

"...and I shit you not, the bastard had run off with the howitzer!"

Ilia laughed loudly, helped on by the comfortable buzz of alcohol in her head and the selection of empty glasses in front of her as one story had turned to half a dozen. They had moved onto one of the alcoves for some privacy, with Emerald leaning against the corner and Ilia sitting on the bench next to her. Ilia got her laugh under control, wiping away a tear. "The—the howitzer? How? Don't those weigh like... a ton!"

Emerald looked incredulous and shook her head. "Don't ask me. All I know is when we got back, the platform was empty and so was his bunk. Who knows where he even took it, much less how."

Finishing her chaser, Ilia gulped and put the glass down a touch more forcefully than she had intended. "So what did you do about it?"

Emerald looked at her funny and made a wide gesture. "We turned a clean pair of heels to that whole shitstorm rightquick. I wasn't about to start explaining that we had had nothing to do with it, so I ran through the blacksmith tent, grabbed these from the shelf and legged it for the dunes." She evidently couldn't help but smirk at the memory, shaking her head. "Never set foot around those parts again. Madoc is probably still howling for that piece of kit."

Vacuo was very gung-ho when it came to administering justice, so she could see why Emerald had beelined it out of there. Ilia could recall a few similar cases of her own from skulking around the fringes of Anima. "The good thing about keeping your dealings abroad is that most of the trouble isn't following you home."

"As an... acquaintance of mine once said," Emerald said, clearly deliberating the choice of word there, "'Burning bridges is all fine and well, presuming you can swim.'"

The laugh came to Ilia easily, Emerald joining in after a short moment. "They've got a point," Ilia managed to say between hiccups, and Emerald got herself under control by reaching for her glass. It had something strong and clear in it which Ilia hadn't caught the name of.

Emerald made a gesture with the glass and looked at it thoughtfully. "Should have heeded his advice, really. I still miss the booze from there, and importing it costs an arm and a leg these days." She took a small sip of her drink, savoring it and smacking her lips. "It's just not the same here or in Vale, you know? They just put a worm into the bottle and call it a day."

Ilia tilted her head and brought her second bourbon up to her nose, breathing in the aroma. "I don't know. Vale nails the bourbon like nobody else. What's your poison of choice?"

Emerald deflated slightly, eyes drifting to her glass as the silence stretched on. "If we're really being honest here... it's a she."

Ah.

"...yeah," Ilia mumbled, looking at her own glass. Heartbreak would explain things. She deliberated what to do for a second. Changing subjects would be easy and she had no shortage of silly anecdotes to share, but on the other hand... Sometimes it was good to talk about things you didn't really want to. The warm hum of intoxication made the decision for her, so she looked around, finding the bar deserted, and offered Emerald her glass, getting a curious look in response. "Wanna go halfsies? Nobody else around to talk to."

"...yeah," Emerald said after a second, pushing her own glass over to Ilia. "Thanks."

They traded sips, and Ilia did her best to withhold her grimace. Whatever it was that Emerald was drinking stung like a bleach, and she hastily swallowed. Emerald took notice but didn't mention it, only taking a modest sip of the bourbon and closing her eyes, savoring the taste and offering the glass back to Ilia.

Ilia shook her head and traded the rat poison back for her bourbon and took a long inhale from it, letting its aroma cover up the aftertaste. "So, poisons," she said, refraining from commenting on Emerald's choice of drink. "The tall, dark and mysterious kind?"

Emerald's eyes blinked open in surprise, and she gave Ilia a long look. Apparently, that had hit pretty close to home. "You've got a good read on me, girl."

"Let's just say that I have some..." It was hard to not think about all of that tall, dark and mysterious who had hugged her a few days ago before leaving, and she ignored the pang in her stomach with familiar ease, "...experience with that type myself." She paused for a moment to hedge her bets. "Let me guess... Legs for days?"

"For the whole fucking calendar," Emerald said and let out a wistful sign. It was probably not a breakup then. Likely just unrequited, which Ilia could definitely relate to. Emerald blinked herself out of her thoughts and looked at Ilia expectantly. "Let me try. Broody?"

Ilia chuckled, remembering how Blake had once shown her her poetry. "Like you wouldn't believe. Hot?"

There was a pause before Emerald spoke up. "Pretty sure she burnt down a small village by looks alone." She looked Ilia up and down, eyes lingering on the hilt of the sword hanging on her belt. "Could she beat you up?"

Ilia let out a sigh of her own. Few things more common in Hunter courting than beating the snot out of your crush with live rounds involved. "Can and has. Yours?"

"Like I said. Small village. Wasn't even a contest, honestly."

Ilia laughed, her smile waning a fraction when she realized she didn't know how much of that was just hyperbole. "I mean, mine's got a small arsonist streak, but I assure you that was all for a good cause." And it had been her house, too. Well, her parents' house.

"You know, we're going to have issues if we're talking about the same person." Emerald smiled at her, mind seemingly elsewhere. "She really sounds like a character."

Not the word she would use for Blake, but it wasn't incorrect. "Yeah. Endlessly compassionate, too."

Emerald's smile stayed on her face, but Ilia could see the emotion behind it slip away. "I suppose we are talking about different people after all."

"I'm..." Ilia started, not sure how to continue. "...sorry." Sometimes, love missed.

That sounded ominous, and she couldn't help but frown. Blake's blastedly cute cat ears aside, it was her passion which had always drawn Ilia in. More than ever now, she belatedly realized, when she had seen that Blake had been everything but a coward after boarding that fateful train with Adam. She couldn't imagine seeing Blake in the same light if it weren't for her need to fight for the ones who couldn't.

It... hurt. A lot, to know that she was with other people now. Ilia let it hurt for a few moments, giving into that dip once again, and then wrestled her mind from it, shelving those feelings away to focus on something else.

Emerald took a deep breath, mouth set. "She's just so... compelling. Like—" she cut herself short, taking a long gulp from her drink and not swallowing for several seconds. "I'd rather not, right now." Her voice was hoarse, and not just from the rat poison.

Seeing her like that made Ilia's stomach lurch, and after only brief hesitation, she leaned over to put her hand on Emerald's shoulder. "Sorry. Didn't mean to pry."

"Thanks," Emerald said quietly. "It's just... the intensity. The passion. It's like being in the sun, standing next to her." Ilia gave her shoulder a short squeeze and took her hand off, thoughts lingering.

Yeah, that was Blake alright. How many nights had they spent, talking about how to best fix everything under the sun? For Ilia, it had always been a practical approach. Punch this fucker, steal this thing, burn this down – like building blocks, piled on top of each other to reach higher. She had figured that one day, the humans would learn. For Blake, though, it had been different. She had had bigger plans, more abstract dreams to reach for, and the road there had been just a series of pre-requisites to fill. In that, she reflected the very best of Adam, only without the... rage. It wasn't a comparison Ilia would ever tell Blake about, but that didn't make it any less true.

Blake had been angry plenty of times. Hell, she had probably been angry for most of her life, in one form or another, but it had always been a cold kind of anger. The kind that sat bone-deep in you, stemming from looking the world in the eye and deciding that you were not content with it. The kind that made it impossible to sit still when all the causes of your discontent were still out there, unchecked and unimpeded, with nobody else to fix them.

Ilia had spent many nights wondering what had separated the two in the end, and now she grasped the line they had straddled. Adam's anger had never been the cold and calculated kind. No, it had been the hot kind. The kind that rose in you when you looked at prissy nobles laughing at the death of your parents, something that gnawed on your reason because by the gods you just wanted to _break_ things. Some things had to be broken before they could be fixed, but while Blake had always looked to the latter, Adam had only been in it for the former.

She understood them both. One of the most satisfying sounds she had heard in her entire life was the sickening crack that had sounded when she had punched Erbse's perfect pretty teeth into her throat back during her final days in the Atlas academy. The feeling of power was intoxicating, and more so was the knowledge that it was _right._ They had deserved it. They had pushed and pushed and pushed until something finally snapped, and now that they went from tittering to screaming, they got to taste just a fraction of a speck of everything they were turning a blind eye to.

The feeling of being in the right was intoxicating, just like any drug was. It made complex things simple, and that simplicity was a drug in and of itself. Once you got in too deep, you always wanted more. You justified more and more things to feel that righteousness, and when you surrounded yourself with people who were looking for that same fix, everything else got distorted when the world was neatly divided into 'us' and 'them' with no meaningful shades of gray. But Blake... somehow, someway, had kept her head, and she broke out. She had seen past all the hollow justifications which back then had seemed too ineffable to be questioned, and she had walked away, just like that. Unlike Adam, or unlike herself, she had moved on to fix things, rather than just break them. All the while Ilia herself had stayed behind, cursing her name.

...it made sense why Blake hadn't chosen her.

She flinched when she felt a hand land on her shoulder, bringing her back to present. She blinked blearily a few times, feeling a lump in her throat, and saw Emerald looking at her with a slow nod of her head.

Ilia pulled herself together and quickly wiped at the corner of her eye. "I could use a hug right now," she mumbled, and didn't resist when Emerald pulled her in by the shoulder. The closeness felt nice, and as she wrapped her arms around Emerald, she very determinedly didn't think about the last hug she had had. Emerald was warm and smelled nice, so Ilia focused on that, taking measured breaths until she started to feel a bit silly for latching onto an acquaintance like that. She could feel herself blushing from embarrassment. "I... think I'm good."

"You sure?" Emerald asked without letting go. "I could do with a little more."

"I mean..." It was silly. But then again, she was drunk and realizing just how starved for affection she had been. And by the tenseness of Emerald's shoulders, she could use the support too. With a deep sigh, Ilia patted Emerald's back and shuffled herself into a more comfortable angle. "Fuckin' girls," she mumbled. "What right do they have to be all soft and cute and shit."

She could feel Emerald choking suddenly before bursting out into a laugh, and Ilia couldn't help but join in herself. The tension she had kept bottling inside her came out all at once, both of them egging each other on with their hysterical giggling until Ilia had to tap out and fall backwards, gasping for air.

"I—can't—breathe," she managed to say between her laughs which only spurred Emerald into another fit, which in turn made her lose control again. Aided by the alcohol, the cycle continued until she hurt too much to keep laughing, and she found herself lying on the bench, flushed and panting for breath. Up above her was Emerald with a dumb smile plastered on her face, and she looked almost concerned at Ilia's state. She had stayed upright on her seat, taking deep breaths and visibly trying to keep herself together.

"That was..." Emerald wiped her eyes and shook her head "...I needed that. Gods."

"...wasn't even that funny," Ilia managed to say, still fighting the urge to giggle. The world seemed to spin ever so slightly, and she had to brace one of her feet against the floor to steady herself. Looking up, she could see Emerald catching her breath with some difficulty. They shared a smile, and on an impulse, Ilia scooted herself on her back towards Emerald enough to rest her head on her lap. It was nice to have some human contact, and right now she couldn't bring herself to rein in her affections.

Emerald, having the social acuity of a godsdamn angel, put her hand on Ilia's head and wih no prompting took the cue to start petting her hair. "No," she said after a moment, "but it was still kind of funny."

Ilia hummed and closed her eyes, taking in the atmosphere. The flush on her face, the warm glow in her stomach, and the practiced fingers threading through her hair. She frowned when she felt Emerald tug at her hair the slightest bit.

"Hey," Emerald said. "You're not going to pass out on me, are you?"

"Mmm, no," Ilia mumbled and blinked her eyes back open, resisting the urge to just doze off. The need to fall asleep on someone was uncomfortably real. "I was just thinking."

Emerald narrowed her eyes, clearly not buying into her lie. "About what?"

Fuck, she hadn't thought it this far. "About..." She raised her hand to make a vague gesture, buying herself a few moments, "the Academy failure. Real good look to have the one Faunus headmaster to get caught in bribery like that. The press is still railing him wholesale."

"Well." Emerald paused her petting and weighed her words. "Press is the least worrying thing he got railed by as I've heard it."

It was mean-spirited and Ilia tried not to chortle, but the rush of alcohol made it hard. "I don't know how you get eviscerated by a Grimm in your own office, but for a headmaster, I feel like that is not usually how it goes."

She got a shrug in response, and Emerald resumed petting her. "He got his. I can see why you'd have issues with... his part in the whole ordeal in particular."

"Yeah—" Ilia trailed off when she realized that Emerald was giving her a meaningful look, and her stomach dropped when she realized that she might have been a bit too vocal about her views on the Faunus. Mistralians were notoriously not very accepting of them, a holdover from their deep ties to the pre-war Mantle.

Emerald sighed and looked to the side, her hand trailing downward to trace Ilia's cheek with her thumb. "You... kind of went violet during that laughing fit, and it didn't look like a Semblance. Put two and two together."

She was supposed to be better at controlling herself. "I... uh. Yeah," she ended up saying lamely, looking to the side herself. The soft touches she kept getting made her feel better, and it seemed like Emerald wasn't about to snub her now.

"When I said that this place was a shithole, I meant it. It's..." She grimaced, looking around like she was looking for something to blame. "I wish we were better. I'm sorry."

Would that she could _make_ them be better, but that was harder than she had thought in her naïve years. "I kind of hate it," she said quietly. "Always having to have that layer of self-control so that people wouldn't actually see me." And that really was it, wasn't it? It was a burden on her because of everyone else. She was old friends with that feeling of fear that always came to her if she thought that someone saw her for who she actually was, but even stronger than that was the abject disgust that came from knowing that none of it was something she had to feel in the first place.

She stopped herself and took a deep breath. That was the kind of hot anger that burned you up from the inside, and not in the fun manner alcohol did.

Emerald set her lips and seemed distant. "It won't last. There's... change, in the air. Not now, not tomorrow, but eventually. Doesn't make it better here and now, but..." She shook her head, like she had forgotten her lines.

"I know." Ilia sighed. The militia was here to stay for at least a while, and even with Leo's phenomenal failure at having a spine, it was still the Faunus who had saved the day, and even the most boneheaded hicks had hard time performing the mental gymnastics required to go around that fact. "People like you"—she looked at Emerald—"aren't the reason. Neither am I, but there's so precious little any one of us can actually do about it that we're just left feeling all sorry about it in the here and now." She took another breath and glanced at the table, trying to gauge if she should try taking a drink lying down like this because she sure as hell wasn't going to make the petting stop. "I've felt bad about it a lot, and there came a point where I realized that just feeling sorry wasn't doing anything. It doesn't help me and it doesn't help anyone else. I do what I can and I... don't do what I can't, and the rest is out of my hands no matter how much I wallow in spite. So I try not to." She left out the part where she had learned first-hand what happens when you take it upon yourself to stab the world into a more acceptable state with a bit too much vigor.

Emerald hummed. "That seems like a very... level-headed approach."

"Eeeeh," Ilia said after a moment of deliberation. "It's all very touch-and-go for me. I mean, I think I still have an arrest warrant in Atlas." The police force there had a notoriously long memory, and she would be surprised if fucking Erbse hadn't ran off crying to whatever sugar daddy she kept to make sure that Ilia's face was firmly on a blacklist until the end of time. She sighed with a shrug. "Man, you crack some molars there _once_ and they never let you live it down just because they happened to belong to some noble." Emerald snorted, and Ilia shot her a smirk. "Honestly, worth it. Prissy little shits."

Emerald laughed out loud, the sound rich and warm in a way which forced a smile on Ilia's face. "You. I like you." Emerald smiled back at her and ruffled her hair. "But I think we've been on depressing topics long enough for one evening."

For a week. Ilia just nodded and huffed out her breath, already feeling lighter. Or more drunk. It was kind of hard to tell.

"Alright." Emerald looked up from Ilia and waved at the bartender. "Barkeep!" Another long drink, please."

Ilia raised her hand, not sure if it was even visible behind the tall backrests. "And make it double!"

She could almost hear the bartender roll his eyes from the other side of the room, but the burst of giggling she got from Emerald was more than worth it. "We've cheated the system, I think. Doubles for all!" she declared with a triumphant wave of her fist. "As long as you bring a cutie with you."

Not sure how to take the compliment, Ilia just smiled at her. "I see this as a win-win situation. Although..." She glanced at the side when the bartender brought in the glasses. "I think I'd need to get up to drink that. And I quite like it down here."

Which really was not a lie. She didn't remember the last time someone had been this physically affectionate with her, and Emerald's fingers threading through her hair made her feel all fuzzy.

Emerald took her own glass and looked at it, contemplating. "Well," she started slowly, "you could sit on my lap."

Ilia squinted. Was she flirting with her? It was hard to tell. She wasn't good at this sort of thing. It took some effort for her to get the gears in her head turning, until she asked herself the question of what possible other reason there could be for someone to ask her to sit on their lap. But she didn't want to presume. Was Emerald even into her?

She thought for a beat, and with some prodding reminded herself that Emerald had just called her cute, too. And that there had been a 'she' before. _Useless._ She felt the urge to smack her head on something, but given how the closest thing was Emerald's midsection, she had to rein herself in.

She shuffled up to her elbows. "Well, I'm not one to turn down an invitation like that." With some difficulty, she shimmied herself all the way up and hopped sideways on Emerald's lap, putting an arm around her shoulder and squirming just a little bit longer than necessary to get herself comfortable. Emerald wrapped her own arm around Ilia's stomach to support her there, and the warm contact made Ilia's face burn up. Hopefully the change wasn't too stark from the drunk flush she had already sported. Emerald only looked at her with a slightly amused look, face otherwise composed and unreadable.

Ilia matched her from her new vantage point, eyes drawn to Emerald's slight smile. It was pretty, and given a closer look now, she definitely saw how much those lips were begging to be nibbled on. When Emerald went to wet her lips, Ilia blinked and quickly looked to the side to find her drink, some of the haze clearing. A part of her wanted to excuse herself and run off to another continent, but the way Emerald's skin felt almost hot against her own kept her in place. She also had to admit that she very much wanted to see that immensely inviting metal ring Emerald had in front of her tube top flicked all the way down.

"All settled?" Emerald asked with a smirk and reached for her own glass, only for Ilia to take hold of it halfway through and divert it towards her own lips.

"Just perfect, thank you," Ilia said and gently took Emerald's glass from her hand. She raised it slightly. "To this shitty world!"

Emerald shook her head in amusement and grabbed the other glass to mirror Ilia's gesture. "Hopefully better by tomorrow."

Ilia drank, and the sour taste of ice-cold grapefruit didn't manage to make her feel any less hot. "Maybe the day after," she said after a satisfied exhale, and then scowled at the alarmingly large collection of glasses on the table. "Because I'm starting to get the feel that one too many was some three orders ago."

"Oh, now I feel like I've enabled you," Emerald said half-heartedly and reached for the glass Ilia was holding, but Ilia had enough Huntress senses in her to move the glass beyond her reach.

"Don't try it," she said with a grin and pointedly took another gulp. She was small, but she wasn't that big of a lightweight.

Emerald smirked back at her. "You should be careful," she said with her voice taking an ever so slightly lower timbre. "This all might be a devious plan for me to get what I want from you, once you're helpless and wrapped around my finger."

The slow cadence and the unflinching eye contact sent a subtle shiver down Ilia's spine, and she had to take a moment to collect herself. Yes, this was definitely, 100% certified flirting, and a very deep part of her reminded her that it was more than just physical _affection_ she had been missing out on. She became acutely aware of every little bit of skin contact they had, especially the way Emerald's fingers were gently pressing on her midsection to keep her stable.

There were many things she could do, but instinct roved over rational thought. "Depends. What might it be that you would want from me?"

Emerald took a slow sip from her own glass without breaking eye contact, and Ilia took a moment to wonder what her rational thought would say about being pasted over a stranger. A hilarious, pretty, understanding stranger with the kind of body that came naturally when you spent your years wandering around and beating up monsters.

Her rational thought better not say a single fucking thing about this matter, she decided, when Emerald's hand slunk higher over her stomach.

"Mmmh. I'd want a great many things," Emerald husked out, eyes hooded and voice promising utter filth. "Like your laugh. I love that."

Ilia blinked in surprise, managing only a half-cough in response when caught so off-guard, and she couldn't keep the dumb smile from creeping up on her face from the absolutely underhanded compliment. Emerald just laughed and pulled her closer, the tension broken, and Ilia could only snort and bury her head in the crook of Emerald's neck, somehow feeling more embarrassed now. If she had gone pink right there, Emerald had the courtesy to not mention it.

"That was unfair," Ilia mumbled as Emerald patted her reassuringly. "You were meant to say something involving ravishing or pinning or... I don't know."

"I still could, you know."

Ilia groaned and pulled herself up to look at Emerald's eyes. "Shut up." As if gravity had flipped, Ilia found herself leaning forward and pressing her lips on Emerald's. There was no resistance, and the rush in her ears intensified to almost drown out the rest of the world, everything crystallizing on just the feel of a warm and wet tongue brushing against hers. A quiet moan escaped her lips when Emerald's hand slid higher and under her tank top to tease the edge of her sports bra. Her rational thought, apparently having learned its place, gently suggested that maybe getting groped in a bar wasn't the most appropriate course of action, and Ilia reluctantly pulled away just enough to look at Emerald without being cross-eyed.

"Maybe..." she swallowed when the tip of Emerald's finger slid under the band of the bra, and every bit of her wanted to tell her to continue, "...maybe not the best place." Their breaths mixed together, and Ilia glanced at the corner of the bar where they could still be seen from. The bar desk itself didn't go long enough for the bartender to just sit and stare, but he'd still be hovering around.

Also, they were in an open bar. That applied even if the bartender stayed away.

Emerald breathed heavily and followed Ilia's eyes, stopping her hand where it was. "He won't bother us."

"How do you know?" Ilia tilted her head. She sounded awfully confident.

"I..." Emerald craned her neck to try to see over the headrests, failing. "I have a trick."

That piqued Ilia's interest, and if her rational thought had opinions on whether or not the presence of the bartender was the point of contention, it stayed quiet. "A trick?"

"A trade secret, so to speak." Emerald winked at her. "Don't worry."

Ilia licked her lips absent-mindedly. That sounded like a Semblance. But she probably shouldn't go further in an open bar. It's not like her apartment was far away.

Then again, Emerald's fingers were so much closer than that right now, and just a bit too far away from her liking. "I trust you."

Something passed over Emerald's face at the words, and she just nodded. "Thank you." She scrunched her eyes shut, focusing intently for a few moments, and then opened them with nothing having changed. Distantly, Ilia wondered if she was being hoodwinked, but she opted to not care when Emerald's hand slipped all the way under her bra to palm her. The angle was awkward, but just the touch alone was enough to make Ilia hiss out an exhale, suddenly aware of the heat gathering between her legs.

Emerald pecked a kiss on the corner of her mouth and moved to turn Ilia around, and Ilia followed the movement to face away from her. She missed the face-to-face contact, but the way this let Emerald massage her chest made her breath catch in her throat as her nipple was gently brushed against. A second hand joined the first, squeezing her through the tank top and then bunching it up on her collarbones to bare her chest.

"Fuck—" Ilia mumbled through her teeth as she felt the air on her nipples, both hardening rapidly as Emerald palmed her. She didn't know where to put her hands, so she reached back to thread one into Emerald's hair and just fisting the other against her pant pocket, eyes closed.

"Sensitive?" Emerald murmured and took her nipples between her fingers, lightly rolling them around.

"Yes—" Ilia hissed, and when Emerald moved to palm her again, she shot her free hand up to grip Emerald's wrist. "Didn't tell you to stop." She looked to the side to meet Emerald's eyes, but she couldn't get a good eye contact without craning her neck painfully.

There was no verbal response, but the soft pinch on her nipples made it clear. Ilia arched her back, holding back a moan, and pressed herself into the touch harder. It made her ache, almost uncomfortably, but she needed more of it. She squeezed Emerald's wrist on instinct, and the moan in her throat wiggled out when Emerald traced her lips down Ilia's neck and kissed her on the juncture there. It felt almost overwhelming, and Ilia pressed Emerald's head closer by her hair, mindful to not be too rough. She was rewarded with a light touch of teeth on her skin, nibbling their way up her neck and making goosebumps trickle down her back.

Emerald made her way up to Ilia's ear, letting out a satisfied exhale to tickle her ear. "I could do this all day, you know." She pointedly squeezed Ilia's nipple to make her gasp. "The sounds you make are pretty addictive." The following long lick on the shell of Ilia's ear as good as proved the statement, and Ilia went through a full-body shiver, tensing up.

"I don't think—don't think I'd survive," she mumbled and pulled Emerald's hand by the wrist down lower. "Besides..." She lowered her voice. "If it's sounds you're after, I have some suggestions." She placed Emerald's hand on her crotch, hips involuntarily bucking once as Emerald gave her a squeeze. Gods, she needed this.

"Mmmh." Emerald seemed to deliberate her choices while breathing in her ear. "You make it hard to say no." She hooked her thumb under Ilia's waistband, and Ilia stiffened with a sharp inhale. The tension was unbearable, and she only clenched harder when she glanced outside of their booth. It should have been mortifying, but through the fog of bourbon and arousal, the openness was nothing but just exciting as Emerald's hand slipped under the waistband.

"Hold on," Ilia said breathlessly and Emerald stopped with an inquisitive hum. Exciting as it was, she wanted a better angle. "Your face, I want to see your face." She shuffled around awkwardly until she was straddling Emerald and staring into her eyes, still holding onto her wrist.

"Much better," Emerald whispered when their foreheads met, and she let Ilia guide her hand back down. The knot in Ilia's stomach twisted tighter when Emerald started working on the belt buckle, and little by little she felt her waistband grow looser as the belt and the button became undone. She swallowed thickly when the low growl of a zipper being slowly pulled filled the space between them, and she closed her eyes with a sigh as Emerald cupped her through her panties.

She let out a mumbled expletive when Emerald started kneading her slowly, palm grinding against her clit. Torture, no other word for it, but also the kind she couldn't refuse. She started gyrating her hips to match the movements, and blinking her eyes open, she saw that Emerald had fixated herself on her chest. Ilia smirked and leaned back slightly, arching her back and running her hands up her body to cup her breasts. There was a definite sense of satisfaction in feeling how Emerald's movements ground to a halt for half a second before she glanced up to Ilia's face.

"Something to your liking?" Ilia stuck out her tongue playfully. She had come to terms with the fact that all of her assets – or lack thereof... – weren't to everyone's liking, but the creeping blush on Emerald's face was certainly a confidence-booster.

"A lot, actually." Emerald slid her hand up to lay it flat on Ilia's stomach, and then pushed it back down, this time wriggling it under the waistband of her panties.

Ilia tried to reply, but she managed only a breathless 'fuck' when Emerald's palm pressed against her clit, making her thighs quiver.

Emerald licked her lips, seemingly mesmerized. "That... Yeah, that I definitely want to see more of." She slid her finger through Ilia's lips, drawing out a soft gasp and a buck of the hips. She repeated the motion a few times, and Ilia grunted in frustration.

They held eye contact for a moment, and Emerald apparently got the message and started easing her middle finger in. Ilia sighed and relaxed, clenching on every delicious millimeter of the finger as it chased away the hollow ache she was feeling. Emerald was slow, painfully slow, but mercifully she didn't linger once she had pushed all the way in. She set a slow but pleasurable pace, angling her palm so that she could grind it against Ilia's clit at the same time.

"I—fuck." Ilia swallowed, putting her hand on Emerald's shoulder for support. "You can go faster, please."

Emerald hummed, putting her other hand on Ilia's hip. "Two?"

Ilia shook her head. "One is good. I'm not—not a big gal."

"You're fucking perfect, that's what you are," Emerald mumbled under her breath.

Ilia chuckled, a fresh wave of heat flooding her face. "Please, just tell me you'll ravish me and whatnot. You're killing me with those."

"Would be such a shame." Emerald smiled at her and cut off the reply by crooking her finger on the way out in a way which jumbled Ilia's vision for a split-second when a jolt of pleasure ran up her spine. Apparently satisfied with that reaction, Emerald sped up, grinding her palm against Ilia harder.

Scrunching her eyes shut, Ilia focused on the feeling. The tension in her was growing unbearable, and she clamped around Emerald's finger hard with her hips bucking to match the movements. Her skin was hot, and as she leaned forward, Emerald's breaths mixed with her own.

Emerald did a small circular motion with her palm, hitting her just right and forcing her breath out. "That—there—do that." She needed no more prompting, and she switched around to repeat the motion, almost just letting Ilia grind herself against her hand. Ilia gritted her teeth and tensed, the tension almost painfully intense, and it all released when Emerald's lips ghosted against her own, sharing a mumbled curse as Ilia clamped her legs together as best she could, bucking and riding out the pleasure as it spread through her like a warm current, suffusing her and making her toes curl.

Her world had contracted to just the warm breaths on her face and the hand between her legs, and her awareness came back to her slowly as the aftershocks died down. She was out of breath and her thighs ached from the awkward position she had been in, and it took her a few seconds of blinking to focus her vision back onto Emerald's smug face in front of her. Without a word, Emerald just pulled her hand up and dipped her finger into her mouth, holding eye contact and making a show of sucking it clean.

Ilia had had a train of thought, she was sure of it, but it got lost in the woods the moment Emerald's finger touched her lips, and she could just stare at her dumbly until she saw that Emerald's shoulders were shaking from trying to hold in a laugh. Ilia blinked, realizing how much she had been staring, and leaned forward with a scowl to do her best to kiss that shit-eating grin off her face. When she wouldn't stop laughing, Ilia went as far as to start nipping on her lower lip which turned the whole affair rather heated when Emerald countered with a short growl and a gentle but firm grip on Ilia's ponytail. Sharing a kiss after that was absolutely filthy, and Ilia found herself riled up again as they broke off and stared at each other, both panting with the rest of the room distantly swirling around them.

"I think," Ilia said slowly, caressing Emerald's cheek, "that I owe you something." She slid her hand down, tracing the hollow of her throat and hooking her finger onto the ring Emerald had on her green tube top. Gods be her witness, she'd _make_ Emerald forget that not-Blake before the night was over.

Emerald took a deep breath, not resisting but spreading her legs pointedly. "And I think that you would look absolutely divine between my legs."

Ilia leaned closer to whisper, "Better start making my way there, then," and placed a quick kiss on Emerald's jawline. She didn't stop there, and continued leaving kisses and a few nibbles down her neck and collarbone until she reached the green top. She paused, savoring the moment, and slowly pulled the ring down to let Emerald's breasts pop out. The motion was as exquisite as she had imagined it'd be, and she didn't waste time in burying her face between them. She took one nipple in her mouth, running her tongue around it, and she got the most satisfying gasp when she brought in the slightest hint of teeth around it. She smiled and palmed the other breast, kneading it slowly and enjoying the softness of it.

"Il—Ilia," Emerald gasped after a moment, hand resting on the back of her head. "Not to hurry you, but..." She nodded downwards.

Ilia let go of the nipple with a pang of regret, giving Emerald a faux pout before kissing her sternum and sliding downwards. The toned midsection was almost as lovely to kiss, but Ilia couldn't tarry until she found herself kneeling on the floor, face between Emerald's legs. Looking up to Emerald, she made a show of slowly wetting her lips and hooking her fingers on her belt. She could feel the body heat on her face, calling her forward.

"Welcome!" they heard the barkeep say as the door jingled, jolting Emerald to attention and making Ilia spring up ramrod straight. Unfortunately, she had been under the table, and the back of her head slammed into the underside of the table hard enough to make the glasses jump.

"Mother _fuck—"_ Ilia shouted, seeing stars and hitting her fist on the bench.

"Fuck," Emerald said under her breath urgently. "Get up, too many people." Ilia scrambled to sit on the bench despite the throb in her head, holding her temples to wait for her vision to clear. She had forgotten about her own bunched-up top until Emerald grabbed it and pulled it down for her, restoring the facsimile of propriety for them.

"Ow..." Ilia groaned, holding the back of her head tenderly and tugged her bra into a more normal position while Emerald did a similar adjustment. She shot her a thankful nod and blinked her vision into a better shape, distantly hearing a male voice chat with the bartender over at the other side of the bar.

"Fucking Mistralians," Emerald mumbled and leaned on her elbow.

"I... Fuck's sake." Ilia shook her head, and as the pain began to ebb away, she let out an amused huff. "Alright, alright." She took the barely touched long drink they had ordered and took a deep swig of it, hitting it back on the table and wiping her mouth. "I wasn't done, and my apartment is about fifteen minutes away. Plan is I'm going to order trashy food, bury myself between your legs until you pry me off, and then I'll pass out on top of you. Deal?"

Emerald gave her a long look before smiling with a snort. "You had me at trashy food." She raised her own glass, matching Ilia's swig, and got up. "Though I'm looking forward to the rest."

Ilia smiled and got up herself, only needing a little support from the bench. This plan was so much better than the one she had had going into the bar.

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck me this took a while to write. The intro especially just kept going on and on and on, but I also had fun writing Ilia so I couldn't bear to put it on the chopping block. I could also have split it in two chapters, but honestly, it's just all big block of talking so I didn't bother.
> 
> This one has not one, but two oblique references of bean-related fairy tales. Most of the time when I have to come up with a random name or place, there is contrived logic behind it connecting it to something in real life.
> 
> Also, do tell me what you think. It was kind of heavy on dialogue this time, and I had second thoughts about how many times I could have the characters just smile and shake their head to break up the monotony.


End file.
